I’ve written before about how we don’t get much in the way of weather ’round here. The pattern of boring weather was broken last Friday morning when a rare pop-up thunderstorm hit central California. Jen and I were both awakened by the sound of thunder. I first put it off as a truck or some other large thing rolling by the house. But once it happened again, I was certain that it was thunder. It’s always a nice surprise when something like this happens. And this storm was particularly surprising, as none of the weather forecasts I had seen recently predicted rain or storms. But a PG&E weather dispatched i received just before 7AM that morning confirmed the presence of actual weather:

A weak upper-level low, about 450 miles south of Diablo Canyon, continues to bring monsoon moisture towards our area.

The doppler radar at Vandenberg AFB is indicating a band of lighting and showers over northern San Barbara County moving west-northwest towards San Luis Obispo this morning. The SLO Weather lighting tracker indicates over 1,700+ strikes this morning mostly southeast of San Luis Obispo

As this band of thunderstorms moves over San Luis Obispo, it will produce mostly cloudy weather and lighting with a chance of rain showers. Precipitation amounts south of our area have been mostly light, with most of the rain evaporating before reaching the ground. (virga).

(Any spelling/grammar errors in the above block were copied over from the source.) Naturally, when there’s lightning in the sky, the smart thing to do is to stand near an open window, holding an electronic device that’s plugged into a wall outlet. And that’s exactly what I did, with the video camera. Watch for the time-lapse lightning bolt around 1:18:

The storm did produce a couple of really loud booms accompanied by bright lightning bursts (not on the video, unfortunately) but it mellowed out not long after I turned off the camera. It tried to come back strong a couple hours later, with a few boisterous thunderclaps just passed 10AM. And then it was done. That’s probably the last storm we’ll have for awhile. Still, I’m looking forward to the next one. Even if it doesn’t happen until sometime in 2009.

Another video made with footage from our trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Music in this video is by Colin Gazeley. You can also see another short jellyfish video here.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few days, you’ve likely heard the news that comedian George Carlin has died. Sad news. I’ve been a fan of his since I was a kid. I can actually remember the first time I heard some of Carlin’s work. I was eleven, maybe twelve years old. I was just at that point in my life where my parents felt comfortable leaving me home alone. And during one of those times where I happened to be the only one in the house, the phone rang. I answered it. From the other end of the line, I heard this:

“I had an interesting morning. I got into an argument with my Rice Krispies. I distinctly heard, ‘Snap, crackle, Fuck you!’”

Keep in mind, this was before the days of Caller ID or *69. I figured it was a prank call, but I was only half right. It turned out to be my friend Ronnie from down the street. He was also home alone, and was having some fun with his parents’ record collection. Once the initial surprise of the phone call wore off, I realized that that bit about the Rice Krispies was pretty funny. Ronnie eventually managed to dub all of his parents’ Carlin records onto cassettes. He and I spent many hours listening to those tapes on my crappy Montgomery Ward stereo. I followed Carlin’s career ever since. I watched many of his cable specials, read one of his books, and I even tuned into the fairly mediocre TV show that was based around him. Jen and I got to see him live here in San Luis Obispo on his last tour. He was preparing for his latest special, which was to be taped in Santa Cruz. He pretty much had his set down, but he was still working from multiple pages of notes which he held while on stage. It was a great show. Here’s a couple really bad photos I took during the performance:

And here’s a fitting video tribute to the “Rice Krispies” bit mentioned above.

So long, George.

This video was made from footage I shot at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The video features sharks, prawns, rays, a flounder and some other fish. Music is by The Gorskys.

In this video blog, I talk about my new drug, Prozac. I actually recorded the video a couple weeks ago, but everything’s still pretty relevant. This is the second video I’ve edited using Final Cut Pro 5. I’m starting to get the hang of the software, and i think you’ll see the results here.

(Music in this video is by Darcy Fray.)